Georgian blogger calls for Twitter attack probe

The pro-Georgian blogger who was the target of attacks that shut down micro-blogging website Twitter last week has called on Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to track down the culprits.

The well-known blogger who goes by the name Cyxymu has said the attacks - which also struck at Facebook, LiveJournal, and YouTube - were carried out by people loyal to Russia who wanted to silence posts criticizing that country's invasion into Georgia last year. On Monday, he called on Medvedev to investigate the denial-of-service attacks and bring the perpetrators to justice.

"I think you're already aware of the fact that unknown hackers staged a DDoS attack on my blog, located at livejournal.com, facebook.com, twitter.com, blogger.com," the blogger wrote in an open letter (garbled Google translation here). "In addition, all projects have been the last stretch by hackers, who all data were from Russia."

Cyxymu, who according to published reports is an economics lecturer named Georgy, said last week wasn't the first time he's been attacked. In October, someone managed to bring down his LiveJournal account and made it inaccessible until May, he claimed.

Thursday's DoS attacks aimed a torrent of requests to view the account pages Cyxymu had on Twitter and the other Web 2.0 properties. Twitter was inaccessible for two hours, although many users reported being unable to use the site for much longer than that. The other sites were able to rebuff the attacks and remain up.

Because DoS attacks are able to be carried out from thousands of miles away, it's often impossible to know who is behind them. Security researchers tracking the attack have not yet speculated who carried out the ones that took out Twitter. So far, Cyxymu has yet to supply any evidence that Russians are responsible. ®